The pace of contactless adoption has accelerated across Europe and it is proving to be an increasingly powerful point of differentiation and innovation for organizations. According to CaixBank, one of Spain’s biggest financial institutions, more than 70% of stores in Spain now have contactless capable POS terminals. And Visa Europe has released data showing the number of contactless payments made in Europe in the past 12 months surpassed the one billion mark.

In our European study of contactless business adoption, we looked at the attitudes and plans for the technology in Spain, Germany and the UK. The report showed that more than 92% of the business leaders interviewed have already invested in contactless projects and expect that 10% of all transactions will be contactless within the next three years.

The adoption of contactless cards is broadly similar across all three countries. But looking more closely at the Spanish market, the region seems least prepared for contactless mobile payments, with only 30% of businesses supporting the technology, compared to 43% of

German and 45% of British companies. But, interestingly, the Spanish are ahead in the adoption of wearable device payments. Here, the technology is supported by 35% of businesses, in comparison to 34% in Germany and only 25% in the UK. This could be due, in part, to Spain’s CaixaBank which made contactless wristbands available at the end of 2014.

Spanish businesses also think that their consumers place less trust in contactless technology than their counterparts in Germany and the UK. They estimate that 41% of Spanish consumers don’t trust payment cards, compared with 25% in Germany and 19% in the UK, demonstrating that more needs to be done by businesses to reassure consumers.

When it comes to drivers for businesses, the top factor behind the adoption of contactless for Spanish businesses is by far faster payments (72%), while implementation cost was named by half of companies as a key challenge, followed closely by maintenance cost and security concerns.

This wraps up our blog series on our contactless report. But if you want to read about the results in more detail, you can download the full report and infographic here.

You may have seen our announcement yesterday with UniCredit in Slovakia where we were selected to supply stickers that contain a contactless payment function. These little beauties based on MasterCard…

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